3.04.2015

Yeah...You Don't Need to be Black for This

**Think Like An Asshole**
*Steve Harvey and the Business of Bad Advice*

Nowadays, it seems as if every male celebrity is in the business of relationship advice.

From intimate chats with Tyrese to words of wisdom with Tyson Beckford, the advice these men give can vary from insightful to god awful. Standing at the top of the shitty advice mountain is Steve Harvey.

Harvey's "let your man be a MAN" advice jumps right off a 1940's cigarette ad for its sexism and antiquated gender expectations. Some women love this "honest" approach to dating and the notion that, while society wants women to leap forward and gain independence, in the world of Steve Harvey, reverting back to the old fashioned days of "I Love Lucy" will make you a perfect catch.

You wanna give bullshit advice? Fine. The problem that I have is the fact that Harvey's target audience (at least on social media) consists of predominantly black women. Black women are already excluded from much of the commercialized feminism (aka, feminism that gets the most media attention and funding) so to have him preach to a group that needs the support the most, is heart breaking...

It's a low blow to a group of women who have it worst in the dating game, given all the stereotypes and negativity they have to disprove.

I've met a handful of single, educated Black women who sacrificed their love life for a better career, and some of them are looking for any advice they can get. What sites should I visit, what clothes should I wear? No one is giving any decent advice and Steve Harvey is one of the only guys out there. And a lot of men like him so conversely, women think, hey, maybe this Harvey guy has a point.

But he doesn't.

Lesson: Women, you do not need to think like a man or think like Steve Harvey. Us men are the ones who need to change. Don't let assholes like Sleeze Harvey tell you any different. Like Harvey's butthole, his advice is also full of shit. (Source)

Filipino American writer and internet personality Ranier Maningding has been on the warpath in defense of Black women lately with some spot-on posts that have set Facebook ablaze. The above is almost like a sequel to his post about how Black women deserve better. And I must say, Ranier currently remains in unflinching fighting form.
So quite predictably, the backlash came in three...two...

"What Do You Know About The Black Community? You're Just An Asian Man!"

It only takes a second to snap yourself back to reality.

During my last post where I criticized Steve Harvey, a guy made a comment expressing his disagreement and, after a bit of debate, he said:

"The fact that [black people] are all here on an ASIAN man's blog about what Black people should do is EXACTLY what's wrong with us." (Source)

*rubs temples*

I have been waiting for a man - any man of any color - to "get it". While so many folks are zeroing in on the racial factor, they are deliberately ignoring the gender factor. You know...'cause sexism is dead and misogyny is just a feminazi code word for anti-men.

Anyways....

We don't need men to tell us how to "fix" ourselves...regardless of their color. That's all this really boils down. See, when women don't like something about ourselves, we obsess about our flaw (whether it's real or imaginary). We blog, we Google, we go to the doctor, we go to the salon, we go the gym, we go the bar, we go the ice cream parlor, we go to our friends, we go to our families, and we nitpick, and we fixate, and we drown, and we hold ourselves to impossible standards.

Katt Williams once said that (straight) men don't get hung upon their flaws; they just get over them. He's half right. Men might not get hung up on their flaws, but they sure as hell don't just get over them. When men don't like something about themselves, they obsess about flaws in others, namely women. When a man hates himself, whether partially or entirely, no woman on this earth will ever do anything right in his eyes.

Thus, Steve Harvey was actually the perfect example for Ranier to choose. Setting the races of both men aside, Steve Harvey is a thrice-divorced man telling women about what they can do better (he gives some advice to men too, but let's be real...his target audience is female. Men couldn't give a shit). Dude is thrice-divorced. So what does that mean? It means that when three separate women on three separate occasions stand before God, a judge, and a bunch of attorneys, saying out loud to your face that they ain't got time for this, you don't need to be doling out advice of any kind to anyone. You can feel free to sit this one out. If anything, you need to be the one doing the soul-searching.

I mean, think of what happens when it's a woman who's been divorced once. She doesn't even have to be famous - regardless of why the divorce happened, she gets the backlash before she can even open her mouth.

A commenter on Ranier's page flat-out stated the real reason for the backlash he's experiencing is due to the fact that he generally speaks positively about Black women (quelle surprise). And yes, he's also pro-AMBW, currently dating a Black women (last time I checked), and blogs, vlogs, and posts frequently about on the subject. So I'm not surprised he's tasting venom for it. Someone should've probably briefed him that Black women are Public Enemy #1 (until someone needs us), and anyone who says anything nice about us is going straight to hell.

After all, when you consider our original sin....

It is interesting that the only group that does not find whiteness in general and white men in particular attractive are Black women and we are harshly punished for choosing every shade of man before them.

8 comments:

Girl I read that post on FB and was like, "Bruh, they gonna come for your scalp...be ready." For the most part, the ones throwing the most hate are the ones he's speaking of.

And to think I know some ladies who think Steve Harvey's the guru for sistahs and relationships. He's more wrong than he is right, but he'll never get it from me. How can a thrice-divorced unfunny comedian tell me anything about what makes a relationship work? Show, muffucka, don't tell!

Though I don't want/have an actual FB account, I was reading Ranier's website and I've seen the fool that his reader's was referring to. I would like the ask him one thing: where does he ( not Ranier, the fool) get off telling people what color an advisor should be? Where does this guy also get off telling people who they should/should not respond to?

As a Black woman, I think that Rainier was spot on when he's talking about Steve Harvey. Honestly, the only thing I follow from him is him being on Family Feud. Otherwise, since his since his showed aired, I have never had any interest in looking at it and when I've read a prior article about one of his ex wives accused him of wronging her, I lost my respect in him being any kind relationship counselor.

To be the example, one must be an example. I don't care if you read the Bible, The Qu'ran, The Torah..etc..all of these holy books will tell you this. If Steve Harvey wanted to portray himself as such, he should have put himself in a better position than the one he's in now. I'm sorry..but it doesn't look right. How can a man with three ex's tell anybody how to tell anybody about stabilizing their relationship, when he had those may marriages? To me, when I come across a man with those many marriages, I run from them as far away as I can. Something is terribly wrong with that. Either by him or ex wives who found something wrong with him..it's just wrong! For a man to be in those marriages doesn't present himself as a stable man . That is not good. That is the last thing our community needs.

I also didn't appreciate that commentator telling me about who's who of the Black community. Don't get me wrong, I'm always grateful for my community standing up for me but in this case ,this man is straight up wrong. It's like he's saying that just because Steve is a Black man, we should swallow the hypocrisy he dishes out.

What the man don't get is ANYBODY can give good sound advice( and be in a good position to do it). You can be any race to do that. So..if every Black person on Ranier's site was to go to an All-Black site with an "advisor" like Steve where he's telling people it's ok to have 3-4 ex wives, kids and no marital stability that is the Black experience?

If I had to advise that guy, I would use this situation of the staying in school mantra and liken it to stars who often tell your kids to do the same. Many of them will tell them to do just that,but a great deal of them that tell your kids this message seem like they're forced to reading it off a cue card , never explain to us why they should stay there and how far in their education they're in and worse, aren't in good positions of doing it. Floyd Mayweather Jr was jeered because of his reading ability while doing a radio commercial. Could you imagine the humiliation he felt being made fun of for it? It makes you wonder if he's able to read a bedtime story to his kids and mostly ,it make you wonder how many kids he told to " stay in school"?I don't know how good/bad of a reader Floyd Mayweather Jr is,but in case he was one of those people who were telling you kids to stay in school, it didn't make him look good and others shamefully let him know about his possible hypocrisy.

It's the same with Steve Harvey. Rainier was calling out the hypocrisy on him for giving out relationship advice that he seems not to have followed with the first wife. I don't care what race the man comes from, hypocrisy is hypocrisy and it should be called out.

He posted the "Cocky Asian bastard" thing just a few days before so I wasn't prepared for a post where he almost questioned himself on his social justice journey. (I must say I'm not a fan of his cockiness but I agree with the rest of what he says)

So I'm with you on this, he doesn't have to be Black to talk about issues in the community, though not everything, there are limits. And Steve Harvey is definitely safe for him. Just one thing, I think he could also talk about what it's like to be Asian American more often. To make race topics more balanced as his FB page is about social commentary between ethnic groups. But I'm fine with whatever he's doing.

I also like the topic of discussion that Ranier had about the Ghetto discussion. Though I'm guilty of using that word ( only once and stopped since then). It just had me thinking how the word seems to apply to every aspect of our lives..not matter how rich or poor we are. Nobody judge the character of a White person if they're called " Trailer Park",but the same cannot be said when we're refer to as Ghetto. Sometimes the word Ghetto is said so much until people really have no idea what it really is. I will give him a round of applause for that. I couldn't wait for someone to bring it up because it can be annoying when people misapply Ghetto.

At the beginning he did talk about a variety of dicussions about AM/XF unity. I guess he's found a topic of discussion that is dear to him. I do agree with you about what you said. There are various people who also look at his blog and may want him to discuss his experiences being an Asian American male or how does other people's experiences being who they are and/or the relationship they have with someone of the opposite race. While I'm proud of him speaking up for people, others also may want him to talk about their communities.

I appreciated the Ghetto discussion too, it was a bit insightful for me as I'm not American (though in France we sort of have an equivalent). I unfortunately somehow absorbed the negativity attached to it when reading stuff written by Americans online.

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